


Three is a Crowd

by anzhelo



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, a very fast slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28439952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzhelo/pseuds/anzhelo
Summary: The first three killers in the entity's realm find one another.
Relationships: Evan MacMillan | The Trapper/Philip Ojomo | The Wraith, Max Thompson Jr. | The Hillbilly/Philip Ojomo | The Wraith
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	1. Evan

There were killers before the trapper, this he knew. When the Entity had dragged him screaming through space and time, it left him to be cruelly molded by dangerous, hulking behemoths. 

He didn’t think about it anymore. Not in a long time. Years, maybe decades. He didn’t think about the passage of time either. All things that would send him to a crisis, if he’s been weaker minded. 

Then it was just him, the Entity had disposed of the old killers. It liked  _ him  _ more. He was its golden boy. If he hadn’t repressed everything, it would’ve reminded him of his father. But he held it down, let himself believe that the suffering he inflicted made him  _ happy.  _ Because he knew what would happen otherwise. 

When the new one came, the trapper was almost afraid. Would he be disposed of, like the others? He saw the twisted figure with the chainsaw, wailing and bellowing after the innocents. Much messier, more brutal kills. What the Entity loved to gorge itself on. The trapper considered killing this new creature, maintaining his position. 

The realm worked as dreams do. No true layout, but place after place melding into each other, disappearing as soon as you turn around. With time, the trapper learned to control his destination, just like in a dream. With focus, he traveled from any dense forest straight to the estate. Now, he had the rotting corn fields in mind as his heavy boots carried him across the wet earth, paying no mind to the campfires shuddering in the distance. Trees melted into the corn stalks as he grew closer, hand gripping the familiarity of the cleaver. 

The moaning was what gave the new killer away. The trapper found him curled against a shack, cradling a necklace in his arms. His eyes squinted behind the mask. A  _ locket.  _ The pathetic man looked up at him, the way the tears and snot and spit left his face was almost alien, getting caught in each crevice of his skin. 

“I kuh-killed them,” he said, but his words were strained and barely understandable. His insides must be as twisted and ravaged as his outside, the trapper thought, from the way his body shuddered and rattled as he cried. He waited for a compulsion to put the man out of his misery, but it didn’t come, and the trapper was grateful for it. 

He knelt down, watching blankly as the man beside him sobbed his heart out. 

“I duh-w-wanna hurt’ny one…” 

Feelings, memories were starting to bubble up inside. He forced them down. 

“You have to.” 

The man shook his head violently, hugging himself, gasping “no more,” over and over. The trapper put a firm hand on his shoulder, and the man grabbed his arm tightly in turn. 

“M-Max. Max, Max,  _ Max,  _ havit now,  _ Max!”  _ he cried. The trapper nodded. 

“Max,” he echoed quietly, almost sadly. Holding onto your humanity was bad here, and yet he couldn’t help but be envious. Max nodded frantically. 

“Mine. My name.”

“Your name.”

“Y-yes…” 

Max sniffled again, rubbing his throat. Talking seemed to hurt him. He tugged the trappers arm, grunting softly. 

“Max” he said, but Max didn’t stop tugging. The next word slipped out. 

“Evan.” 

He felt his face burn like he’d confessed a sin. Max seemed content, but the trapper immediately stood, Max shrinking back. He turned and left, breaking into a sprint when he reached the trees. 

  
  
  


Evan’s trials were bloodier, fueled by his desire to prove himself. The Entity seemed to live for it, rewarding him in the one way he never wanted. 

To keep his name. It taunted him in his dreams, his father always said it in a way that sent anxiety to his core. The way it left the lips of men so nonchalantly, not knowing they’d die by his hand. It tortured him. 

_ Evan. Evan. Evan. Evan.  _

  
  
  


Max found him next. His clumsy limping could be heard from outside the crumbling estate. The trapper growled as he paused from his work. 

“Evan...Evan...Evan…” 

Max had a soft voice, when he wasn’t crying, or screaming. He had a soft demeanor when he wasn’t killing, too. Hearing his name sent a pang of annoyance down to his stomach at every repetition. The trapper looked down at the dissected bear trap at his hands, neutered into harmlessness only to be built up into something deadlier, soon. 

“Evan...Evan...Evan…”

Goddamnit. He stood, irritation burning at his core. The movement alerted Max, who limped closer to his spot, startling a bit when the trapper revealed himself. 

“Evan, I, I did it again,” Max said feebly, stumbling in place. The trapper stared wordlessly, with only his screwdriver in hand. When he got no response, Max tried to rephrase. “I-I hurtem again Evan…”

Still nothing. Max staggered closer, arms reaching slowly, and grasped the trapper by the front of his coveralls, pulling him into an embrace. The trapper shoved him off. Hard. 

Max tumbled against the dirt, his lopsided frame providing little help for balance. It was hard to read the expressions on his face, but the trapper could see it in his eyes; fear, fury, betrayal. He was used to that look. 

“Evan-“ 

“Don’t call me that. Don’t look for me. Don’t touch me. Go home and do what you were brought here to do,” the trapper snarled, relishing in the way Max cowered at his words. The cruelty silenced the growing discomfort he had felt over the other man. 

Max wasn’t moving, and the trapper readjusted his grip on the screwdriver. 

“Or do I have to make you an example,” he growled, ready to ruin Max further if he needed to. 

Instead, Max lunged at his legs, knocking the trapper to the earth, hard. He howled in pain as the metal embedded in his shoulder pushed against bone. Max was holding him down, he was  _ strong.  _ Stronger than the trapper had expected, for someone slightly leaner than he was. Blows rained down, clumsy but forceful. 

“I thought you-ou’d be  _ nice  _ to me,” Max wailed, “you wasn’t  _ scared _ , you called me  _ Max!”  _

The trapper struggled to breathe as his mask seemingly shattered his already once-broken nose, blood gushing into his mouth.

“Thought you’d be my  _ friend!”  _

Max’s voice gave out at  _ friend  _ and he clutched at his throat instinctively, giving the trapper a second of relief. He rolled over with a pained groan as Max worriedly rubbed at his neck. 

The trapper spat blood into the dirt, red clinging to the teeth of his mask. He felt Max loom over him again and looked up, guilt flooding through him at Max’s pained eyes.

“You tricked me,” he whimpered. The trapper didn’t have the energy to move. The Entity had tortured him before, by its unnatural hand and by the hand of its cruel, former killers. But it hurt so much more when he deserved it. 

“Thought I was all’lone,” Max said weakly, “‘n then I thought I had a friend,” he looked at his twitchy, gnarled hands, “if you treat me like papa I’ll kill you like papa…” 

“Don’t,” the trapper gasped, garnering little response from Max save for a tired glance, “Max, I’m sorry.”

Max cocked his head, eyes half lidded. He wasn’t stupid. The trapper rolled over on his side, blood streaming in clean lines down the mouth of the mask. 

“It’s not your fault Max…” his mind was reeling, “your father can’t hurt you here. No one can hurt you here.” 

Max sighed, kneeling down. 

“Are you scared t’make friends Evan?” 

Hearing his name felt more like a gut punch than usual. He spat out more blood. 

“We can’t have good things here, Max.”

“I’ll hurt them if we can be friends Evan…”

The trapper rested his head on the ground listlessly. This was probably exactly what the Entity wanted. 

“Sure, Max.” 

He heard a sigh of relief, and Max limped away, leaving Evan bleeding on the cold ground. 


	2. Max

In Max’s opinion, Evan was a bad friend and horrible company. He still never truly forgave him for shoving Max to the ground in his moment of need, his cruel words terrifyingly familiar to papa and Chief. But Evan was all he had now. 

Max tried to make friends with the people that often came to the farm and scuttled through the corn. They didn’t look like the sort of people that papa knew, so he hoped they would be nice. But when he revealed himself, they screamed and ran. 

There was a deep, dark voice telling him to hurt them. It was new, and unwanted. Why would he hurt these people? He knew what it was like to be scared. Even though it hurt that they were scared of how he looked, he wanted to show them it was okay. He wasn’t really a monster. Not like Chief said. 

He found one hiding in a big, tall red locker. They were unfamiliar and hadn’t been there before the fog had taken him away. He could hear her muffled crying from inside, and opened the door. It was a delicate looking woman, with dark skin and glasses and hair tied back in a ponytail with clothes worn and torn. She screamed in fear and Max almost screamed too, but instead he crouched down and held his crooked hands out. The woman seemed to calm immediately, and hesitantly held her hand out as well. Delighted, Max pressed their palms together and smiled. The lady smiled back, though weakly, but Max was elated. 

He’d known true hurt that day. No beatings, burnings, bullets, compared. He let them all go, because he didn’t understand why he needed to obey that dark voice telling him to kill them all. 

Now he knew. He saw his papa, his mama, Chief, the entire force jeering as he was strung up like slaughtered cattle, torn apart and rebuilt over and over until he thought he’d lose his mind. His naked, twisted body on full display. He wanted to cry and scream but his eyes kept getting crushed by the spidery limbs that restrained and tortured him, his throat pulled open and flayed and ruptured again and again. Limbs twisted until the bones splintered. Max wanted to die.

He stopped letting them go after that. He never saw the nice lady in the locker again, and he was grateful. He didn’t want to hurt her, he knew if he saw her again he wouldn’t have a choice. He hoped he never would, even though he missed her small, warm hand and weak smile. 

He settled for Evan. Evan was mean and quiet and never took that scary mask off, but he didn’t seem to care about Max’s looks, and nothing said they had to kill each other, so Max decided to take all the company he could get. 

Another downside to being friends with Evan was his house was impossible to find. Max couldn’t wrap his head around how this place worked. Sometimes he’d reach Evan’s house in minutes. Other times he’d take the exact same route, walk for what felt like hours, and end up in a circle, or at a campfire where the scared little people scattered like bugs at his approach. 

He wanted to find Evan now, because Evan was good at being mean and killing and Max was starting to slip up and let other people go when he  _ really  _ didn't mean it, and he really  _ really  _ didn’t want to get hurt again. 

Trees started to thin out.  _ Evan’s house?  _ No...this was a place unlike anything Max had seen before. There was a glowing neon sign high up above, but Max couldn’t read it from here. He was incredibly nearsighted. He shuffled closer, feeling anxious. What was this alien place? It kind of looked like a shack, but it was furnished differently. He peeked inside. Papers, like an office. 

He considered calling for Evan, but sincerely doubted he would be here. Instead, he opted for a simple; 

“Hello?” 

He coughed and instinctively reached for his throat. The left side was much softer and less gnarled than his right. He massaged it gently as he poked around this strange space. 

He picked up a paper and squinted at it. It was stained, crumpled, and smudged, but a few words jumped out at him. 

_ Wreck. Application. Azarov.  _ Max wrinkled his nose. He had no idea what that last one meant. He picked up a pencil and doodled spirals around the paper mindlessly. This place was alright, actually. Maybe this could be his secret retreat. Not that he really had anyone to keep secrets from. But it felt good to have options. 

He put the pencil down and straightened up best he could, taking in the place again. It smelled like gasoline, which was unpleasant but easily something he could ignore. He turned to inspect the filing cabinet, wondering if he could bust it open with something to read his contents. Surely they’d be more clean and legible than the ones left out in the open. He was curious about the history of the place. 

Turning back to search for something to hit it with, he looked back at the page he doodled on. It had moved. Turned, more specifically. The pencil had rolled off the table. 

It couldn’t have been the wind, there  _ was  _ no wind. He stared ahead, unsure what to do. Were ghosts real?! Max really couldn’t catch a break. He held down a whimper, eyes shifting over the room. 

Then, he saw it. A ripple over the cabinet, like a heatwave. Max locked his eyes with the warp in reality as it flickered in place. He stood still for a moment longer, and then slung a metal folding chair. 

Like magic, the figure was revealed. It roared in pain as the chair knocked it back, and Max immediately recoiled in fear. Where he had been staring was barely above the pelvis of this person. They were  _ tall.  _ Tall and gangly and spidery and as they stood to their full height Max felt himself take a few steps back. They stared at each other for a moment before the stranger tore out of the building in one fluid, silent movement, leaving Max dumbstruck for a second before he clumsily chased after them. 

The stranger was fast, but Max was blessed with almost blinding bursts of adrenaline, and he caught up enough to grab them by their skinny wrist, and halted them both in their tracks. He instinctively covered his face with his free arm as the stranger whipped around, but his grip remained strong.

The hit never came. He peeked to see the tall stranger trembling, snarling quietly under their breath. Max slowly lowered his arm. 

“Din’ wanna scare you,” he said quietly, but the stranger didn’t react to his words, “sorry fer hittin’ ya...”

The stranger tugged feebly, but Max held tight. 

“All ‘lone? Here?” 

They snarled, in a way Max had never heard anything, human or animal, sound before. The closest he could compare it to was the trumpeting of an elephant, but even that didn’t sound quite right. 

“Y’scared? Evan was scared.” 

Nothing. Max rubbed at his throat. He had so much on his mind, but never the stamina to say it all. Just another reason he envied Evan. He could talk as much as he wanted but chose to stay silent. What a jerk. 

He wanted to let go, knew it was making them upset, but he feared that the stranger would take off and he’d never see them again. They could turn  _ invisible.  _ That was the coolest, not-scary thing he’d ever seen. He wanted to know them.

“Please stay,” his voice cracked. Finally, the stranger untensed. Max grew excited, and hoped he was making the right choice as he let go of their arm. 

The stranger bolted, scrabbled a yard or two away before whipping around to see if Max had followed them. He didn’t, simply standing under a sickly tree. The stranger watched him, face unreadable. Max couldn’t tell if they were wearing a mask, or if that was their face. He wanted to sate his curiosity, inspect it, touch it. 

The stranger leaned forward, then took one, two steps towards Max. He perked up. They trusted him. 

“Max,” he said, holding out his hand like he did for the little lady in the locker. The stranger looked at it blankly. He reached out, brushed fingers for only a second, and they bolted again, far from Max, leaving him alone as the fog rolled in. 

  
  


Max hadn’t slept much after that night. He was terrified the spider-thing would punish him. Yet it didn’t seem to care. He hurt the people more than usual, just in case it was mad with him. To prove he’d be good if it let him have good things. 

He didn’t tell Evan yet, because as ashamed as he was to admit it, he wanted to keep this new person to himself. Evan was mean, but he was smarter than Max, talked better than him and understood things more. He could steal the stranger away if he wanted to. 

He asked him once, as inconspicuously as possible. 

“R’there more people like us?” 

Evan shook his head, forcing a clamp shut with his bare hands. 

“Used to be. Not anymore. Entity picked ‘em off.” 

“Oh…”

Max hoped he wouldn’t get picked off. That sounded worse than being tortured. But that must mean Evan didn’t know about the new fellow yet, right? He didn’t seem the type to care about keeping secrets like that. In fact he didn’t seem to leave his house much at all. He certainly never visited Max anymore. 

Visiting the stranger’s place was easier to find than Evan’s. Max visited every day, or what felt like every day. There was no sun, and most of the time, no moon. No night or day. He relied on his internal clock, hoping it was keeping up. The first few times he visited the stranger was gone, so Max just quietly sat in the battered chair and thought until he grew tired and left for home. The third day he heard the deep chime of a bell, and he could see them watch him from outside. The bell rang again and they disappeared. So that was how they did it. 

Very cool. 

On the fourth day Max ignored the bell chimes as he rifled through old papers, not yet having cracked open the file cabinet and instead picking through the ruined desk. That same word kept showing up.  _ Azarov. Azarov. Azarov.  _ Was it a name? It was a strange name, but this person was also quite strange. Maybe they were Azarov. 

He felt the back of his neck prickle and turned slowly to see the stranger looking over him. He supposed they could be an Azarov. Silhouetted by the old bulb behind them, their features were still hard to make out. Max gulped. 

“Azerrov?” 

They leaned back slightly and Max could just barely catch their lips curl into a snarl. Their hand squeezed the spinal cord-knife-creation they were holding, which Max had become more or less familiar with. They didn’t seem threatening, just...displeased. 

Max decided he didn’t know where else to go with this and dropped it. He sat down on the chair, tiredly amused at the stranger’s apparent surprise at the action. 

“It makin’ you hurt people too?” 

A low whine rattled from them, and they nervously twirled the spine in their long, slender fingers. Max swallowed hard. 

“Don’t like it...but it’s’hurts me if I don’t…” 

They whined louder, a certain edge to it that sounded much more human. 

“It hurts you too?” 

A quiet exhale, almost a huff. Max looked down. 

“I’m sorry…” 

His heart ached when he remembered how Evan had apologized to him. No one had ever apologized to him. No one had ever said such gentle things. This stranger seemed a lot like him. Max tried the same approach. 

“S’not yer fault.” 

They let out a little huff again, almost akin to a sob, but their body was still and tears did not fall. Max slid from his chair and slowly approached them, waiting for a sign of discomfort. It didn’t come. He gently placed a hand on their forearm and slowly rubbed up and down it. 

“Being alone hurts.”

They nodded. Max looked down. 

“...Help each other?”

A beat. They nodded again. Max couldn’t help it, his face broke into a smile. He could swear the strangers eyes crinkled slightly. 


	3. Philip

The evil plucked the memories from his mind like a vivisection. 

The torture was not working. Philip had accepted death before and he could embrace it again. Too often the entity had to pull him back from being too far gone. He was good at letting go. Too good. 

So it began to take him apart. Steal away what made him human. His memories decayed and he was painfully aware of it. He was losing himself and he was helpless to it. 

_ Funanya _

He sobbed it over again and again, because the name meant nothing to him anymore. Nothing but a dull ache he couldn’t place. Nothing but the feeling of loss. 

Nothing but the hate of Azarov remained. Vague feelings he couldn’t source. A whisper at the back of his mind to kill. 

He didn’t kill. Never take an innocent life. Not willingly. His fury burned but it was directed at the remains of Azarov. He could outwait this evil. Even when it plucked away every last shred of consciousness and he was left a husk, he would let go again. It was easy to die here. Just not for long enough. 

Max made an itch in his mind that he could not scratch. His words were hard to understand, it didn’t help that English wasn’t his first language. 

Faintly, writing a letter. Holding a soft, wrinkled hand. Writing in the dirt. A shaky, bloodied hand writing in the dirt. 

_ I’m sorry. Not your fault,  _ Max had said. 

Those words made him sad and angry and he didn’t know why. Something was his fault. He didn’t want to be forgiven. 

_ I forgive. Forgive. Funanya.  _

He let out a sob. It wasn’t fair. Whatever it was. He wanted to sleep. To die. 

Max put a hand on his arm. It was warm and calloused and gentle, compared to when he had grabbed him when they first met. 

They had to hurt them, Max had told him. That it wasn’t fair but they had to.  _ Evan said.  _ He didn’t say who Evan was. If they hurt them, they get rewards. Max showed him a locket. His reward. It was engraved and Max pointed to the  _ M  _ desperately and repeated his name like a prayer,  _ Max, Max, Max.  _

He pointed to him, wanting a name too. He had nothing to say. Even if he knew, he couldn’t speak. 

Max called him Bing Bong, for the sounds of the bell when he arrived. Max would weave through the junkyard, gently calling.  _ Bing bong. Bing bong.  _ Then the bell would greet him, and his friend would appear. 

He hoped dearly that Max would not be taken away from him. It hurt to have a friend and he didn’t know why, but he couldn’t give Max up. It was a bittersweetness that was the closest thing he’d felt to happiness in what felt like decades. 

He wanted to keep Max, so when the evil thing gathered him up to kill, he played along. 

The first hit slashed a young man across his back so deep he swore he saw spine. Indeed the man seemed unable to move his body as he gasped and writhed uselessly against the ground. He picked him up, carried him to where the whispers were strongest. Hooked him like a butchered cow. 

That was all he managed that round, but the evil seemed pleased. He went back to the junkyard unscathed. Max was waiting for him. They spent another day in each other’s quiet company. He wished he could say something about his kill. Instead he sighed quietly as Max hummed and drew. 

  
  


There was someone new in the junkyard. Max’s shuffling steps were nowhere to be heard, instead the steady clunky of heavy work boots. 

He cloaked, invisibility embracing him like a security blanket. Followed the noise. Saw the stranger. 

Tall, though not as tall as him. Muscular but still had some fat on him. A jagged, grinning mask. Skin cracked and bleeding, with harsh metal embedded in his shoulder. 

He stared at this strange one. No doubt he was an inflictor of suffering, like him or Max. He approached cautiously, watching for any signs of, well, anything. 

The stocky stranger looked about the junkyard calmly. He sighed once, muttered an  _ alright,  _ and left. 

He wanted to know more about this stranger. 

  
  
  


He took the pencil from Max and started to draw. He was no artist, and his hands were even shakier and less coordinated now. 

Circle. Two pits for eyes. A smile split at the bottom jaw. Lots of sharp teeth. He gave it to Max. 

Max looked uncomfortable and muttered something unintelligible. He leaned forward. Max rubbed his throat and repeated himself dejectedly. 

“Evan.” 

He cocked his head, and Max reluctantly took the hint. 

“Evan’s’my friend. He’sa killer like us...Lil’ mean…”

He nodded. He wanted to meet Evan. He gently pushed Max’s wrist. Max shook his head. 

“Show you Evan’f you tell me...tell me who you are,” he managed. He fell back in his seat. He didn’t know anymore. He’d tell Max if he could. But memories were just out of his grasp and trying to relive them hurt. 

He slumped sadly, unable to take Max’s offer. Max, at least, seemed to understand that it was out of his control. He gently patted his hand. He liked Max’s warm hands, in contrast to his cold ones. 

“Who’s Azarov?” 

He raised his weapon tiredly, letting the skull end clatter onto the table. Max’s fingers brushed gently over the nose and eye sockets, mouth agape in mild curiosity.    
  


He had killed four people today. 

Their screams rang in his ears, the rainbow of their viscera stained into his mind and his tongue. His mouth seemed closed over, but his tongue still writhed uslesssly from time to time. 

Purples, browns, yellows, the gore was all too familiar. He hated watching their eyes tense and glaze when they died. One of them vomited all over his chest when he hooked them. It was hot and felt like it could singe him through his clothes. He was a little afraid to wipe it off with just his hands. It disappeared with the fog anyway. 

Four lives he ended, their last moments in pain and fear. The evil force that imprisoned him here gave him a taste of a reward. 

He was a child again, his face caressed by the warm, wrinkled hand of his grandmother. She looked at him with love.  _ Love.  _ Her lips moved and he couldn’t hear her but he knew she was telling him his name. He had a name and he had been loved and when he came to in autohaven wreckers he opened his mouth and a clear, human cry rang from it. 

Max liked to rifle through the papers within the workshop and now it was his turn. Azarov. Azarov. Azarov. 

There was little else except Azarov. Memories of a cruel man’s smattered neck was of little help right now. 

Max was watching him, he could feel his eyes on his neck. There was only one more place to look, now that the office had been flipped upside down in his search, papers strewn everywhere.

Max saw his friend approach the filing cabinets with dark intent and excitedly stood in between them. 

“I can do it,” he said with an eager laugh, “‘M good at breakin’ things.” 

He stepped back and let Max do his thing. With a gleeful holler, Max’s sledgehammer knocked two cabinets to the ground with an ear splitting clang, one drawer bursting open while another remained stubbornly closed. He knelt down to let his long, trembling fingers rifle through the pages while Max continued his carnage against the metal boxes. 

_ A through J.  _ Nothing jumped out to him. Another cabinet clattered to the ground next to him and he looked through that one as well.  _ T through Z.  _ No.

_ M through S.  _ He skimmed the pages. Stopped.

Employee. Ojomo, Philip. 

His mouth moved wordlessly, like the old woman in his memory. But he tasted the silent name on his lips with full intent.  _ Ojomo. Ojomo. Ojomo.  _

It slipped from his mind like sand, he had to keep rereading it to remember.  _ Philip Ojomo. Philip Ojomo.  _

Max was still battering the remaining cabinets with glee but Philip barely registered him. He knew deep down this was not his own discovery, but a gift from the entity. A beautiful, horrible gift he’d been blessed and cursed with. To see his name again. To recognize it as his. He clutched the page to his chest, envisioning the old woman who  _ loved  _ him saying his name to him. It fit perfectly into the memory. 

_ I’m proud of you, Philip.  _

He sobbed. Whoever she was, he missed her. He was shaking. 

Max stopped, looking down at his friend. 

“A-are you okay,” he stammered, kneeling next to him. He reached for the paper but Philip flinched hard and recoiled, unable to give it up for anything. His stony lips parted with great effort. 

“Ff-f—fff….”

It trailed off into a sad, low growl, but Max perked up in understanding. 

“I know,” he whispered, “you can do it.” 

“Fff—Phi-l-upp,” he choked. 

Max whooped and hugged him, crying his name out in pride.  _ Philip! Philip! Philip!  _ Philip was in shock, still clutching his paper like a lifeline. There was still a piece of him left and it hurt like  _ hell,  _ but it was  _ him.  _ A little bit of what was lost had been found. It hurt in such a vibrant way that made Philip finally feel like he was living. 


End file.
